The coronavirus pandemic has claimed over 1.5 million lives with one death being reported every nine seconds on a weekly average.
Half a million COVID-19 deaths were reported in just the last two months, indicating that the severity of the pandemic is far from over as vaccinations are set to begin in December in a handful of developed nations.
The novel coronavirus caused more deaths in the past year than tuberculosis in 2019 and nearly four times the number of deaths due to malaria, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the last week alone, more than 10,000 people in the world died on average every single day, which has been steadily rising each passing week.
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Nearly 65 million people globally have been infected by the disease. Many countries across the world are now fighting second and third waves even greater than the first, forcing new restrictions on everyday life.
The United States continues to lead in terms of fatalities, with over 273,000 deaths alone. North America and Latin American regions combined have more than 50% of all coronavirus deaths that have been reported.
The Latin American region, the worst-affected globally in terms of fatalities, recently surpassed over 450,000 deaths.
Robert Redfield, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the pandemic will pose the country’s grimmest health crisis yet over the next few months, before vaccines become widely available.
“I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” Redfield told a livestream presentation hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Vaccine hopes
On Wednesday, Britain became the first country to approve the vaccine candidate developed by Germany’s BioNTech and Pfizer Inc, jumping ahead of the rest of the world in the race to begin a crucial mass inoculation programme.
However, supplies are expected to be very limited in the early stages which means that every country beginning the drive will have to prioritise based on risk factors.
US health regulators are expected to approve distribution and administration of the vaccine in mid-December.
Africa aims to have 60% of its population vaccinated against COVID-19 within the next two to three years, the African Union’s disease control group said on Thursday. The continent of 1.3 billion people has recorded more than 2.2 million confirmed coronavirus infections, according to a Reuters tally.
